Measurement technology

Today I ran a 7K route, about half of it on farm tracks, in about an hour.  This gives me a theoretical marathon time of 6.5 hours - an hour off my target.  Of course, I couldn't really run a marathon at that speed right now, but it gives me an idea of the speed I could expect if I could build my endurance.

The route tracks some roads that used to be "real" roads before the M4 plowed through the village in the 1960s. They are lovely lanes, lined with hawthorn, sloes, rosehips and blackberries - I should go back and do some gathering for hedgerow jelly!

I've been using Endomondo to track my runs - it's a phenomenally useful app, and of course you get all you really need in the free version.  I recommend it highly to anyone who cycles or runs!  I've also been using Richard's Adidas micoach, which tracks my heart rate and run time (it would also track my pace, but unfortunately I've lost the bit that does that - but that's fine because Endomondo does it in speed terms, rather than real pace - which is practical).  I'm in two minds about the micoach - on the one hand, it's really useful for what it does at the moment, but on the other hand, you can't just buy one bit of it - if I want the pacer back I have to buy a whole new unit - wasteful and shameful!  Adidas ought to allow purchases of the individual components as part of their efforts to be more sustainable.

I like the fact that I can save runs on Endomondo - the next step will be to run the same route from time to time and try to improve my speed.  I've also been trying to work out a safe 10K route from home without too many hills, but as Richard has remarked in the past, the problem with living as high above sea level as we do is that virtually everything is down.  Actually, that only applies to the west, where you soon get to the "Cotswold Edge", a sharp drop into the Severn Vale from the plateau that extends to our east.  My run through Tormarton was of course eastward, taking advantage of the flattish Cotswold landscape.

One alternative for flat routes is to drive down to the common in Old Sodbury, as that has plenty of quiet(ish) roads that are reasonably flat.  The only thing I don't like is that there is relatively little off-road running that isn't impossibly muddy.  The common is just a huge bog - that's probably why it wasn't included in Yate.  At any rate, it just doesn't feel right to drive 4 miles in order to go for a run.

Before I begin: the research period

So if you knew you needed to run 26.2 miles in 29 weeks' time, what would you do first?  Get out and do some road training?  Not if you're me you wouldn't - you'd go online and start reading up. 

I checked PubMed for interesting medical research on long distance running.  I looked up marathon training programmes and advice, and scoured the Virgin London Marathon magazine for helpful information (mostly it contained ads).  Once I'd done all this, with varying success, we headed for the bookshops of Bath.  We decided to give Toppings a miss - just because it's at the top of town, so we'd either be carrying books up and down the hill or would have to climb the hill a second time.  Granted, with the marathon in mind, that shouldn't have bothered me, but there was my family to consider, of course.

So the first stop was the local branch of Waterstones, where the staff are friendly and the books are numerous.  There was nothing I really felt taken by, but I picked up a generalist book by Matt Roberts called Get Running.  It's not quite Dorling Kindersley, but it has attractive people (airbrushed?) in instructive photographs, and relatively straightforward content on how to start a running programme.

Mr B's understands the importance of a place to sit

Our next destination was our favourite independent bookseller outside London - Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights on John Street.  This is a book person's bookstore - an eclectic selection of whatever takes Mr B's fancy, carefully organised and displayed with many little notes about what the staff think of the books, spread out over 5 little rooms on three floors.  It is sort of an anti-Waterstones - tiny and personal, and full of many "perfect books" which are hard to pass over as you seek the sort of book you came in for, but which you couldn't have described until you'd found it.  And in the sport section I did indeed fine my book: Marathon Running: from beginner to elite, 4th edition, by Richard Nerurkar.  I'd never heard of him, but I'd heard of Haile Gebrselassie, who is quoted on the front as saying "if you want to run a marathon, or a faster one, you have to read this book!"   Well, I do, and I'm prepared to take his word for it.  So I have the book.

Now  armed with medical literature references, two books, a Runner's World magazine, and the beginnings of advice from friends and relatives, I feel ready to put my running shoes on.  Not that I've read everything.  I've dipped in, got the gist, made up my mind.  Sometimes, that's all research really needs to be.

It all started here

I hadn't realised the letter had arrived.  In its opaque plastic wrap it looked like a motor catalogue.  I might have left it piled up with the other unopened bank statements and advertising brochures, but my husband had got a parcel with a letter too - saying he hadn't got a place on the London marathon, but please accept this nice jacket instead.  He wanted to know where was my letter?  Rifling through all the ignored mail, we found the distinctive red plastic.  I ripped it open and found the acceptance certificate - I had a place on the London Marathon 2013.

I used to run, what feels like a lifetime ago, before thyroid cancer, before kids, before gaining 30 pounds.  Not real long distance running - I'd run for an hour before breakfast, usually covering around 7.5Km.  I thought vaguely about trying to enter a 10K, but then the above-mentioned events intervened, and by the end of it all I was an overweight, overtired Person Who Used To Run.

But for reasons best known to himself, my husband volunteered to run for SeeAbility in the 2012 London Marathon.  I had no desire to join him, but I enjoyed helping him fundraise, and got a tremendous buzz from seeing him finish, in 5hours 29minutes.  We'd dashed all over London trying to catch up with him - managing to meet him near the Cutty Sark, missing him at Tower Bridge, spotting him from a DLR platform, cheering him on in the north Docklands, and finally shouting like mad from the grandstand on the Mall as he sprinted for the finish.  The atmosphere was utterly contagious - all these great charities and causes, swarms of excited supporters, all those exhausted, heroic runners coming in as the Virgin DJ played rousing tunes.  Each was announced - including a runner for Sikhs in the City who was over 100 years old.  Apparently he had declared that this would be his last marathon - because he wanted to "concentrate on shorter distances and faster times."  I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking that to even be alive, much less making clever remarks and running a marathon, aged over 100, would be a miracle for me.

So when the opportunity to enter the ballot system came up shortly afterward, my husband had no difficulty persuading me to join him in entering.  The chances of winning a ballot place are pretty slim anyway.  I don't think there was any rational analysis of this decision - it just floated in on the continuing feel-gooditis from the 2012 event.

And now I have the letter, and I've got to follow through.  Okay - I don't have to.  But I'm going to.  It's not something I've always wanted to do.  But the time is right for many reasons, even though the euphoria of last year's race is barely a memory.  I've got 29 weeks to prepare.